the sweetest of sunlight
by minkspit
Summary: There's room to breathe in there, somewhere. A few shorts written before or during the chaos of the plot.
1. Best Friends

_The way you said I love you, before we jump._

* * *

They didn't have time.

The Sratha Din and every inch of this unfolding disaster awaited them, Quinlan's heart beat a bruise against his ribs, and even though he and Dakkan had long found shelter, he still felt as though as they were running. They might as well have been. No one would escape this unscathed, Quinlan thought.

He felt a nauseous ache in his chest when the delegation stopped discussing their options. The oncoming storm rested below the horizon in all its dark glory, and no matter how many elegant words everyone strung together, the sentences were only fragile strings holding back reality a little longer: _we are going to war._

Dakkan removed his hands from where he leaned on the table and stood. Quinlan had kept watch on his best friend from the corner of his eye while he could. The debate had escalated quickly, and as a captain, he'd been swept into it. Now, with the most grueling decision made and the meeting over, no one pressed attention on him any longer. Quinlan followed Dakkan out the door and into the hall.

They stopped for fresh air beside one of the windows.

"Well, this is a mess."

Dakkan scrutinized the sunset outside. Looking at the world cautiously became easier when they didn't know if each sunset was their last, Quinlan said. He hesitated. Dakkan's face looked older in the fading light. He resembled the same father that the Sunsgrove council had told him to give up on.

"Dakkan?"

"Hmm?" Dakkan looked up.

We'll find him. The words didn't emerge. "What do you think will happen from here?"

"I don't know, Quin. I wish I did."

Quinlan laid a hand on his shoulder. "Whatever happens, I have your back, for what that's worth." He tried to inject humor into his voice. It sounded wilted and forced, but it was something.

Dakkan seemed to hear something else. His face changed, and a spark returned his eyes, even if it departed in seconds. He clapped Quin on his shoulder, and left his hand there.

"It means a lot," he said. "Thanks, Quin. And I have yours."

The future was dazzling in its darkness, and the horrible unknown in it–and the potential for sacrifices, and regret and responsibility that crushed Dakkan and Quinlan beneath them–but at least there was this.

Dakkan squeezed his shoulder. Love you. He inhaled before dropping his fingers from Quinlan's arm.

"Let's do this."


	2. My Favorite Son

_The way you said I love you, not to me._

* * *

The neighbors invited Dakkan over to play with their daughter again, probably because they saw the stagnant loneliness in the house a mile away. Dakkan declined. First of all, he needed Dad's permission, and second of all, Dad didn't give or say much anymore. It wasn't a new development, either. He'd been that way even before Mom got too sick to leave the bed.

Dakkan debated on making himself lunch before the sun rose too high. Their house remained small and empty and quiet. He decided against it. He wasn't hungry enough for that. Later, he'd pry open the pantry and make a sandwich to eat by himself at the deserted table, but not yet. Their dried salmon still looked good.

The idea of dessert for lunch all day every day tempted Dakkan, but the dream wasn't all it'd been cracked up to be, much to his disappointment. After eating the remaining sweet bread and candied minnows for a week straight, and realizing that it left him grumpy and hungry and only drew Dad's scolding–if Dad noticed–Dakkan gave up on the idea.

Dakkan crept to the back of the house. He held his breath in the fear that someone would hear him, and he'd Get In Trouble, for one reason or another. The door to his parents' bedroom was cracked open. He peeked in.

The windows were half closed. Light poured in from their open half and leaked through the shutters. Mom lay in their hammock. It was what she always did now, Dakkan thought, when she didn't have the energy to make it to the table. A dull red blanket covered her. Dakkan barely made out the rise and fall of her chest. He'd gotten used to the sight. The mention of 'mother' summed up the image of a still head on a pillow and a tail poking out from beneath a sheet.

Dad sat next to her. Dakkan supposed that his weight was shifting the hammock, but it didn't look like it. Dad was stern, and intimidating, but mostly he just looked stiff and not there and didn't take up much space. Sometimes his eyes looked the same as those of the candied minnows Dakkan ate: glazed, and not really present.

He had that look on his face now. Dakkan glimpsed it when he turned his head. Dakkan didn't know how someone could manage to change so little but also change so much.

Mom stirred. Dad's gaze flickered down, and for once, most of the glaze went away.

"Where's Dakkan?" Mom's voice was a mutter. She held herself like flower petals after they landed in water and then started softening and rotting.

"He's in the kitchen," Dad said. "He's fine."

Mom's hand drifted to touch his. Dad met her three-fourths of the way there. He wrapped his hand around hers and squeezed.

"Good," Mom said.

Dad leaned in and bumped his forehead to hers and murmured something, and the worst part for Dakkan was that _he_ _knew what it was_ , rare and precious and not for him, but even then the "I love you" sounded dim and half-dead.

Dakkan scampered down the hall and fled out the door. He'd visit the neighbor after all.


	3. The Shape of Mist

"Y'know, it's usually me who has the bad idea that we decide to go along with anyway." Dakkan laughed nervously, pushing aside the dewy branch that had whipped against his arm. "Not to be, ah, rude or anything but—are you sure you know where you're goin', Janik?"

Janik looked over her shoulder, raising her eyebrows at him.

"And I thought you liked adventure, Dakkan."

"I do," Dakkan said, kicking aside a leafy sapling on the ground and splattering his foot with dew as the two tromped on, "but the part of adventure I don't like involves getting lost in the mist and being eaten by a Treewalker after Dad forbids me from ever returning to Terria again, ever. Which is kind of a problem."

"What, being eaten or not being allowed to visit Quinlan and me again?"

"Both."

The trees were thickening as they went along, growing wider and rougher, and Janik skipped over a few of the arched giant roots that bulged from the forest floor. Dakkan scrambled over them. The forest floor was slick with spring morning dew and mist. Sunlight was a soft rumor that hung far, far above their heads.

Janik breathed in the coolness, feeling a shiver go down her spine as she looked up and saw the towering tree trunks disappear up into the mist. She loved morning. Everything was quiet and cool, and as much as she enjoyed debate, it was nice to escape the constant rattling of words that went with her diplomatic studies, or her parents grilling her every morning. There was something soothing and collected about morning. Quinlan liked the sunlit-dappled woods when Caldus cut him free enough from his studies to explore them, but she liked the mist.

"Okay, this is creepy." Dakkan ducked his head to avoid walking face-first into a dew-laced spider web. "I hope the walk is worth whatever you promised we were goin' to see. Why did we end up doing this, again?"

"Because Quinlan is in bed sick, and you and Kenosh didn't get the news before you got here," Janik said matter-of-factly, her curled tail bobbing behind her, "which just leaves you and me. The adults told us to go 'entertain ourselves', and I didn't think you would want to spend your whole time here learning to recite the governing principles of the Vulpin council. And the last time I checked, Dakkan, you don't have a very busy schedule."

Dakkan grinned. "You got me there."

Janik and Dakkan walked on further, winding into the woods. They treaded carefully to keep their balance as they started up a slick slope. The mist followed their ascent. Both of them were flecked with moisture when they came to the top of the rise and stepped out from behind the rows of trees. A giant lay fallen against the slope, its roots bigger than Lutren dinghies still embedded in a crushing grip on the hilltop. Its massive, moss-splotched frame was supported by the other monoliths in the woods. Despite being hollow and covered in moss reveling in its slow decay, it stayed strong—a hollowed out passageway to the sky—and Janik approached the entrance.

Dakkan whistled at it. He had no need to duck when he clambered into its belly, and he and Janik easily stepped in side-by-side.

"Cripes," he whispered, looking up at the inside of the hole-dotted roof and wrinkling his nose at the smell of wet wood. "This thing has gotta be over a thousand years old."

"A million is more like it." Janik's wide eyes roved over the inside.

The two scrambled up the inside of the tree, feeling spongy wet wood and white disks of toadstools under their feet, and finally, after what seemed to be an hour of walking, they spied the light at the end of the tunnel. Janik darted up the last steep incline to reach the outside first, Dakkan scrambling to follow her. They both stopped on the jagged outcrop of bark.

"Woah," Dakkan said.

An entire different canopy level was laid open to them: a complex map of outspread branches eons old littered with bunches of leaves, vines, and wads of mistletoe bigger around than Dakkan's head. Green-nipped buds lined the web of vines, making them into their own dew-covered spider webs, and the mist put everything beneath a dreamy, color-dulling filter.

The branches were wider spread this high up, and instead of having the clutter of mist and undergrowth in their faces like before, Dakkan and Janik could see the sun. It was a red disk in the distance poking from the mist with stark clarity.

"Some sailors are gonna be nervous this morning," Dakkan breathed, gaze fixed on the scarlet orb in front of them.

Janik looked up at his face.

"Worth it?" she said.

Dakkan looked over the expanse of clouds, forest, and sun before them. He shifted, making the droplets clinging to his whiskers shiver.

"Worth it," he said.


End file.
